It was due to be the musical centrepiece of a festival. Instead the £45,000 classical grand piano played just one brief and off-key tune as it slid from a row of pallets on a delivery truck and crashed 14ft to the ground.

Way beyond the worst bungles of the accident-prone piano shifters in Bernard Cribbins's song Right Said Fred, the disaster happened just as a proud music festival organiser snapped away on her camera to record the instrument's long-awaited arrival.

"It was a Rolls Royce among pianos," said Penny Adie, artistic director of the Two Moors Festival in Devon, who had mobilised supporters to welcome the Bosendorfer grand to a village in Exmoor national park.

As its wooden casing splintered, it gave a death rattle described by Ms Adie as "a deafening noise like 10 honky-tonk pianos being hit by mallets". Her husband John, the festival's manager, said: "It made an incredible racket - like something from a cartoon."

The 9ft long piano, considerably bigger than most concert grands, was being unloaded by staff from a specialist removal firm from London when its end appeared to snag the lorry's tailgate. Slewing round, it slid down the pallets, bounced on the ground, flipped and carried on down an embankment.

Three staff jumped clear, one holding his head in his hands in one of the camera shots which are the festival's unwanted souvenir.

The piano, now an insurance write-off, had been the subject of a fundraising appeal by the festival, which appointed the Duchess of Wessex as its patron last year.

The removal firm G&R declined to comment. Mr Adie, 61, said that the piano's workings would be examined but it was impossible to believe that the 10,000 working parts would have survived the impact.